The Little Nugget · I · VIII · Chapter 2 8 3 (1/2)

III

The armchair critic, reviewing a situation calmly and at his ease, is apt to make too small allowances for the effect of hurry and excitement on the human mind. He is cool and detached. He sees exactly what ought to have been done, and by what simple means catastrophe might have been averted.

He would have made short work of my present difficulty, I feel certain. It was ridiculously simple. But I had lost my head, and had ceased for the moment to be a reasoning creature. In the end, indeed, it was no presence of mind but pure good luck which saved me. Just as the door, which had held out gallantly, gave way beneath the attack from outside, my fingers, slipping, struck against the catch of the window, and I understood why I had failed to raise it.

I snapped the catch back, and flung up the sash. An icy wind swept into the room, bearing particles of snow. I scrambled on to the windowsill, and a crash from behind me told of the falling of the door.

The packed snow on the sill was drenching my knees as I worked my way out and prepared to drop. There was a deafening explosion inside the room, and simultaneously something seared my shoulder like a hot iron. I cried out with the pain of it, and, losing my balance, fell from the sill.

There was, fortunately for me, a laurel bush immediately below the window, or I should have been undone. I fell into it, all arms and legs, in a way which would have meant broken bones if I had struck the hard turf. I was on my feet in an instant, shaken and scratched and, incidentally, in a worse temper than ever in my life before. The idea of flight, which had obsessed me a moment before, to the exclusion of all other mundane affairs, had vanished absolutely. I was full of fight, I might say overflowing with it. I remember standing there, with the snow trickling in chilly rivulets down my face and neck, and shaking my fist at the window. Two of my pursuers were leaning out of it, while a third dodged behind them, like a small man on the outskirts of a crowd. So far from being thankful for my escape, I was conscious only of a feeling of regret that there was no immediate way of getting at them.

They made no move towards travelling the quick but trying route which had commended itself to me. They seemed to be waiting for something to happen. It was not long before I was made aware of what this something was. From the direction of the front door came the sound of one running. A sudden diminution of the noise of his feet told me that he had left the gravel and was on the turf. I drew back a pace or two and waited.

It was pitch dark, and I had no fear that I should be seen. I was standing well outside the light from the window.

The man stopped just in front of me. A short parley followed.

“Can’tja see him?”

The voice was not Buck’s. It was Buck who answered. And when I realized that this man in front of me, within easy reach, on whose back I was shortly about to spring, and whose neck I proposed, under Providence, to twist into the shape of a corkscrew, was no mere underling, but Mr. MacGinnis himself, I was filled with a joy which I found it hard to contain in silence.

Looking back, I am a little sorry for Mr. MacGinnis. He was not a good man. His mode of speech was not pleasant, and his manners were worse than his speech. But, though he undoubtedly deserved all that was coming to him, it was nevertheless bad luck for him to be standing just there at just that moment. The reactions after my panic, added to the pain of my shoulder, the scratches on my face, and the general misery of being wet and cold, had given me a reckless fury and a determination to do somebody, whoever happened to come along, grievous bodily hurt, such as seldom invades the bosoms of the normally peaceful. To put it crisply, I was fighting mad, and I looked on Buck as something sent by Heaven.

He had got as far, in his reply, as “Naw, I can’t⁠—” when I sprang.

I have read of the spring of the jaguar, and I have seen some very creditable flying-tackles made on the football field. My leap combined the outstanding qualities of both. I connected with Mr. MacGinnis in the region of the waist, and the howl he gave as we crashed to the ground was music to my ears.

But how true is the old Roman saying, Surgit amari aliquid. Our pleasures are never perfect. There is always something. In the programme which I had hastily mapped out, the upsetting of Mr. MacGinnis was but a small item, a mere preliminary. There were a number of things which I had wished to do to him, once upset. But it was not to be. Even as I reached for his throat I perceived that the light of the window was undergoing an eclipse. A compact form had wriggled out on to the sill, as I had done, and I heard the grating of his shoes on the wall as he lowered himself for the drop.

There is a moment when the pleasantest functions must come to an end. I was loath to part from Mr. MacGinnis just when I was beginning, as it were, to do myself justice; but it was unavoidable. In another moment his ally would descend upon us, like some Homeric god swooping from a cloud, and I was not prepared to continue the battle against odds.

I disengaged myself⁠—Mr. MacGinnis strangely quiescent during the process⁠—and was on my feet in the safety of the darkness just as the reinforcement touched earth. This time I did not wait. My hunger for fight had been appeased to some extent by my brush with Buck, and I was satisfied to have achieved safety with honour.

Making a wide detour I crossed the drive and worked my way through the bushes to within a few yards of where the automobile stood, filling the night with the soft purring of its engines. I was interested to see what would be the enemy’s next move. It was improbable that they would attempt to draw the grounds in search of me. I imagined that they would recognize failure and retire whence they had come.

I was right. I had not been watching long, before a little group advanced into the light of the automobile’s lamps. There were four of them. Three were walking, the fourth, cursing with the vigour and breadth that marks the expert, lying on their arms, of which they had made something resembling a stretcher.

The driver of the car, who had been sitting woodenly in his seat, turned at the sound.

“Ja get him?” he inquired.

“Get nothing!” replied one of the three moodily. “De Nugget ain’t dere, an’ we was chasin’ Sam to fix him, an’ he laid for us, an’ what he did to Buck was plenty.”

They placed their valuable burden in the tonneau, where he lay repeating himself, and two of them climbed in after him. The third seated himself beside the driver.

“Buck’s leg’s broke,” he announced.

“Hell!” said the chauffeur.

No young actor, receiving his first round of applause, could have felt a keener thrill of gratification than I did at those words. Life may have nobler triumphs than the breaking of a kidnapper’s leg, but I did not think so then. It was with an effort that I stopped myself from cheering.

“Let her go,” said the man in the front seat.

The purring rose to a roar. The car turned and began to move with increasing speed down the drive. Its drone grew fainter, and ceased. I brushed the snow from my coat and walked to the front door.

My first act on entering the house, was to release White. He was still lying where I had seen him last. He appeared to have made no headway with the cords on his wrists and ankles. I came to his help with a rather blunt pocketknife, and he rose stiffly and began to chafe the injured arms in silence.

“They’ve gone,” I said.

He nodded.

“Did they hit you with a sandbag?”

He nodded again.

“I broke Buck’s leg,” I said, with modest pride.

He looked up incredulously. I related my experiences as briefly as possible, and when I came to the part where I made my flying tackle, the gloom was swept from his face by a joyful smile. Buck’s injury may have given its recipient pain, but it was certainly the cause of pleasure to others. White’s manner was one of the utmost enthusiasm as I described the scene.

“That’ll hold Buck for a while,” was his comment. “I guess we shan’t hear from him for a week or two. That’s the best cure for the headache I’ve ever struck.”

He rubbed the lump that just showed beneath his hair. I did not wonder at his emotion. Whoever had wielded the sandbag had done his work well, in a manner to cause hard feelings on the part of the victim.

I had been vaguely conscious during this conversation of an intermittent noise like distant thunder. I now perceived that it came from Glossop’s classroom, and was caused by the beating of hands on the door-panels. I remembered that the red-moustached man had locked Glossop and his young charges in. It seemed to me that he had done well. There would be plenty of confusion without their assistance.

I was turning towards my own classroom when I saw Audrey on the stairs and went to meet her.

“It’s all right,” I said. “They’ve gone.”

“Who was it? What did they want?”

“It was a gentleman named MacGinnis and some friends. They came after Ogden Ford, but they didn’t get him.”

“Where is he? Where is Ogden?”

Before I could reply, babel broke loose. While we had been talking, White had injudiciously turned the key of Glossop’s classroom which now disgorged its occupants, headed by my colleague, in a turbulent stream. At the same moment my own classroom began to empty itself. The hall was packed with boys, and the din became deafening. Everyone had something to say, and they all said it at once.

Glossop was at my side, semaphoring violently.

“We must telephone,” he bellowed in my ear, “for the police.”

Somebody tugged at my arm. It was Audrey. She was saying something which was drowned in the uproar. I drew her towards the stairs, and we found comparative quiet on the first landing.

“What were you saying?” I asked.

“He isn’t there.”

“Who?”

“Ogden Ford. Where is he? He is not in his room. They must have taken him.”

Glossop came up at a gallop, springing from stair to stair like the chamois of the Alps.

“We must telephone for the police!” he cried.

“I have telephoned,” said Audrey, “ten minutes ago. They are sending some men at once. Mr. Glossop, was Ogden Ford in your classroom?”

“No, Mrs. Sheridan. I thought he was with you, Burns.”

I shook my head.

“Those men came to kidnap him, Mr. Glossop,” said Audrey.

“Undoubtedly the gang of scoundrels to which that man the other night belonged! This is preposterous. My nerves will not stand these repeated outrages. We must have police protection. The villains must be brought to justice. I never heard of such a thing! In an English school!”

Glossop’s eyes gleamed agitatedly behind their spectacles. Macbeth’s deportment when confronted with Banquo’s ghost was stolid by comparison. There was no doubt that Buck’s visit had upset the smooth peace of our happy little community to quite a considerable extent.

The noise in the hall had increased rather than subsided. A belated sense of professional duty returned to Glossop and myself. We descended the stairs and began to do our best, in our respective styles, to produce order. It was not an easy task. Small boys are always prone to make a noise, even without provocation. When they get a genuine excuse like the incursion of men in white masks, who prod assistant-masters in the small of the back with Browning pistols, they tend to eclipse themselves. I doubt whether we should ever have quieted them, had it not been that the hour of Buck’s visit had chanced to fall within a short time of that set apart for the boys’ tea, and that the kitchen had lain outside the sphere of our visitors’ operations. As in many English country houses, the kitchen at Sanstead House was at the end of a long corridor, shut off by doors through which even pistol-shots penetrated but faintly. Our excellent cook had, moreover, the misfortune to be somewhat deaf, with the result that, throughout all the storm and stress in our part of the house, she, like the lady in Goethe’s poem, had gone on cutting bread and butter; till now, when it seemed that nothing could quell the uproar, there rose above it the ringing of the bell.

If there is anything exciting enough to keep the Englishman or the English boy from his tea, it has yet to be discovered. The shouting ceased on the instant. The general feeling seemed to be that inquiries could be postponed till a more suitable occasion, but not tea. There was a general movement in the direction of the dining-room.

Glossop had already gone with the crowd, and I was about to follow, when there was another ring at the front-door bell.

I gathered that this must be the police, and waited. In the impending inquiry I was by way of being a star witness. If anyone had been in the thick of things from the beginning it was myself.

White opened the door. I caught a glimpse of blue uniforms, and came forward to do the honours.

There were two of them, no more. In response to our urgent appeal for assistance against armed bandits, the Majesty of the Law had materialized itself in the shape of a stout inspector and a long, lean constable. I thought, as I came to meet them, that they were fortunate to have arrived late. I could see Lefty and the red-moustached man, thwarted in their designs on me, making dreadful havoc among the official force, as here represented.

White, the simple butler once more, introduced us.

“This is Mr. Burns, one of the masters at the school,” he said, and removed himself from the scene. There never was a man like White for knowing his place when he played the butler.

The inspector looked at me sharply. The constable gazed into space.

“H’m!” said the inspector.

Mentally I had named them Bones and Johnson. I do not know why, except that they seemed to deserve it.

“You telephoned for us,” said Bones accusingly.

“We did.”

“What’s the trouble? What⁠—got your notebook?⁠—has been happening?”

Johnson removed his gaze from the middle distance and produced a notebook.

“At about half past five⁠—” I began.

Johnson moistened his pencil.

“At about half past five an automobile drove up to the front door. In it were five masked men with revolvers.”

I interested them. There was no doubt of that. Bones’s healthy colour deepened, and his eyes grew round. Johnson’s pencil raced over the page, wobbling with emotion.

“Masked men?” echoed Bones.

“With revolvers,” I said. “Now aren’t you glad you didn’t go to the circus? They rang the front-door bell; when White opened it, they stunned him with a sandbag. Then⁠—”

Bones held up a large hand.

“Wait!”

I waited.

“Who is White?”

“The butler.”

“I will take his statement. Fetch the butler.”

Johnson trotted off obediently.

Left alone with me, Bones became friendlier and less official.

“This is as queer a start as ever I heard of, Mr. Burns,” he said. “Twenty years I’ve been in the force, and nothing like this has transpired. It beats cockfighting. What in the world do you suppose men with masks and revolvers was after? First idea I had was that you were making fun of me.”

I was shocked at the idea. I hastened to give further details.

“They were a gang of American crooks who had come over to kidnap Mr. Elmer Ford’s son, who is a pupil at the school. You have heard of Mr. Ford? He is an American millionaire, and there have been several attempts during the past few years to kidnap Ogden.”

At this point Johnson returned with White. White told his story briefly, exhibited his bruise, showed the marks of the cords on his wrists, and was dismissed. I suggested that further conversation had better take place in the presence of Mr. Abney, who, I imagined, would have something to say on the subject of hushing the thing up.

We went upstairs. The broken door of the study delayed us a while and led to a fresh spasm of activity on the part of Johnson’s pencil. Having disposed of this, we proceeded to Mr. Abney’s room.